Get You
by Candle Beck
Summary: Slash, SethRyan. Seth messes up, but Ryan's got his back.


Title: Get You  
Author: Candle Beck  
Pairing: Ryan/Seth  
Rating: I'd say PG, but apparently I'm dirty-minded, so draw your own conclusions.  
Note: Written so quick it can't be seen by the naked eye!

Get You  
By Candle Beck

Every day starts out the same. Every day ends the same. It's all very convenient and easy to get used to.

Seth steps out of the kitchen onto the patio, and if he's got it timed right (which he usually does), the first thing that happens is that the sunlight hits the poolhouse's glass walls and skewers directly into his eyes. Seth squints until his eyes are basically closed, and shields his face with his hand dramatically.

He's got a mental image of this moment, turned all gold by the light, his shadow thrown back strict and black on the wall, the shape of his hand on his face, the blue of the pool water bucking rhythmically in little waves. Seth likes this picture of himself, which is a pretty unique experience for him.

Usually he takes Ryan his first cup of coffee in the morning. He'll have both mugs, his blue one and Ryan's dark green one, and he'll have to open the poolhouse door with his elbow, ceramic hot against his palm and the soft underside of his arm.

Sometimes, Ryan's already up, reading or messing around on the Gameboy in his pajama pants and wife-beater, and that means he didn't sleep, or at least, not very well.

Seth rarely mentions it, even when there were like three weeks of slipping through the poolhouse door and Ryan saying rustily, "hey," with his bed already made. By the end of that, Ryan's eyes were sunk so far back that Seth just wanted to kinda brush his fingers real light across Ryan's eyelids and clear it off, the dark insomniac patches underneath and the snaps of red through the white.

If he's not up, though, he's asleep, which is obviously better for about a million different reasons. Ryan sleeps on his side, okay. Sometimes with one hand tucked under his face, making him look like he's posing, for like a mattress ad or something. Seth pokes him with his foot until Ryan's face scrunches up and he starts mumbling, pushing his face into the pillow.

Seth tried the classic wake-up trick of holding the coffee under Ryan's nose once, but Ryan had, like, an arm spasm, and they both ended up getting scalded pretty bad. Seth could see the burn on the back of his hand for a long time.

Ryan wakes up and mutters at him, reaching for the coffee on autopilot. Seth is talking by this time, has been talking since he first came into the poolhouse, but Ryan isn't really listening. Seth can tell because when Ryan is listening to him, he blinks more often. Even when Ryan is pretending not to hear him, Seth can always tell.

So anyway, Seth doesn't talk about anything of importance, in the mornings with the poolhouse dim behind the shades and warm, smelling like Ryan's deodorant and suntan lotion and chlorine. Seth rolls easily from pestering Ryan about buying Coachella tickets to dissecting this Entertainment Weekly article he read about the new Batman movie, and then maybe something about Western Civ or girls. Something. It doesn't matter much.

Ryan seems to like it in the background of his waking up, though. And when he goes to take a shower, he claps Seth on the shoulder, just like every other morning, and Seth thinks about how Ryan's hands got progressively softer and smoother after he came to live with them, his life in Chino disappearing like the calluses on his palms and fingers. After they got back from Portland, it took Seth a week or two to realize that Ryan's hands had toughened up again over the summer.

Seth kinda hated it when Ryan would touch him then, worked rough and strong. But he never said anything, because how could he?

While Ryan's in the shower, Seth finishes his coffee and reads some of whatever Ryan has on the floor by the bed. When the water turns off, Seth leaves so that Ryan won't see that he's stayed.

And at night, it's the morning played in reverse. A weekday evening after they've done their homework, or a weekend evening after they've gotten back from going out, either separately or together, it's all the same.

The last thing they do every night is play Playstation. It is Seth's most favorite tradition, and Seth is a guy with a healthy respect for tradition. If this even counts. Which is probably doesn't, because since when do videogames count as tradition? But whatever.

They play Playstation and they recap the day for each other, the parts they might have missed or not paid attention to, like: did you pick up the new Bright Eyes albums this afternoon; and what is _with_ Zach's hair this week; and yeah, Summer's skirt definitely won the championship of the world today.

Seth gets his life all in order by telling Ryan about it. That makes sense; he's only got a life to put into order because of Ryan, so.

It's cool, talking to Ryan when they're both real tired and listing to the side. It's cool talking to him without looking at him, eyes on the screen, and Seth still plays with his whole body, and Ryan still plays all casual with one leg stretched out, leaning back against the couch or the bed. 

They mute the TV and plug Seth's iPod into the speakers, turning the volume down low because Sandy and Kirsten are all old and go to sleep way early, and it's not like the poolhouse is soundproof or anything. They sit side-by-side, knees knocking together and shoulders touching briefly in passing.

There has been no part of Seth's life that he will remember better than sitting on the floor with Ryan, playing videogames. He'll be a hundred years old, and he'll dream of it. That's gonna break his heart, he already knows it for sure.

Ever since they came home in the fall, Ryan has been the first person Seth sees in the morning and the last he sees at night.

One night, Indian-walking on the sides of his feet down the upstairs hallway past his parents' room, Seth is carrying his shoes in one hand and his socks in his back pocket, and he's still hearing Ryan say goodnight at the poolhouse door, the television rumbling behind him, his foot is still a little asleep from him sitting on it, his thumbs are still twitching and everything is very quiet, and very near to him, and he thinks, 'oh yeah so this is what everybody's always talking about.'

No matter what happens over the course of a day, a week, a month, Ryan and Seth end up in the poolhouse together, figuring it out. They're very good at it, by now.

Lindsay comes and makes Ryan kinda crazy and nervous for awhile, then happy, then sad, then happy again, and Seth gets weirded out because Ryan is, above all things, something constant. But Ryan also smiles when she calls, his eyes down on the floor and his mouth bent sweetly, and Seth likes seeing that.

Summer sometimes looks like she wants to slip in through a crack in Seth's heart and never leave again, but then an hour later she's asking him, so, like, do you own stock in Urban Outfitters, or did you just lose a bet? And her mouth will curl up in a way that he remembers pretty well, and Seth will say something snide and get away as soon as possible.

Anyway, they've both got lives apart from each other, is the point, but Seth knows where he'll be after the eleven o'clock rerun of the Simpsons is over tonight. So, you know. He gets by.

Then one night, or morning, or sometime, Ryan says, "Hey," and when Seth looks over at him, Ryan is mainly blue eyes and that wary expression that did not leave his face for the first six months that Seth knew him, Ryan is gold like Seth is when he's standing in the flash of light from off the poolhouse windows.

Seth blinks and licks his lips and doesn't think about anything for a long time. He comes back to himself on the patio, the stone baking under his bare feet, the wet-cement smell of the YMCA and the outside pool at Harbor.

Something crashes from inside the poolhouse, and Seth flinches, but doesn't turn. Until a chair comes flying out through the window, shards of glass in his arms and back, Seth won't turn.

He stands there and tries to remember what just happened, how he ended up out here, but he doesn't have a whole lot of luck.

So, okay.

Not much changes. Ryan glances at him out of the corner of his eye a lot, at dinner, at the kitchen counter eating cereal, on the couch. Seth doesn't play coy, because it's not as if Seth has any fucking idea how to play coy. When he catches Ryan looking at him, he makes a crooked little smile or bugs his eyes or makes a fish face or something. Ryan smirks and looks away, clearing his throat. 

Seth thinks maybe it's possible that Ryan touched his cheek and leaned towards him, and he ran away. Maybe.

And yeah, that makes sense too. Because Ryan is a constant, but Seth? Seth is a coward. He'll chase something until he gets it, then get spooked and scamper back to his room, where he's got big padded headphones and a removable harddrive just for downloaded music.

And it works out, because Ryan starts saying stuff like, "I dunno, man, I'm kinda tired," and "I think I've played enough Grand Theft Auto to last me the rest of my life, dude." So Seth doesn't have to be weird and not-coy, because Ryan isn't even around.

Ryan's going to bed early. Ryan's studying at the library until it closes, and biking home after dark even though Seth said he'd come pick him up if he'd just call. Ryan's on the phone when Seth comes in, he looks up and mouths, "Lindsay," and Seth nods knowingly, backs out the way he came in. Goes up to his room and stares at the wall for awhile.

In the morning, Seth stands in the kitchen, looking out the window at the poolhouse for a long time, his coffee steaming up into his eyes. He tries to figure out if there's movement behind the shades, wishes for the seventy-billionth time for X-ray vision. He's got a mug all poured for Ryan, but he hasn't gone out to wake him up since whatever it was that happened in the poolhouse happened.

Fuck X-ray vision. Seth wants the ability to turn back time. Yeah.

When the poolhouse door opens, Seth leaves Ryan's coffee at his place at the table and runs upstairs into the bathroom, where he locks the door and brushes his teeth for about a half an hour, until it's time to go to school.

A couple of weeks pass.

Ryan is no less his friend, he's just. Not around as much. It's hard to pinpoint.

There's Ryan, at breakfast, in the shotgun seat, in the school hallway. Clattering his lunch tray down and saying something like, "Differential equations are trying to kill me," narrowing his eyes against the sun. Seth notices that every time Ryan comes out to the patio where they all eat lunch, he looks at the ocean first, before he smiles at Marissa and winks at Seth in greeting, before he cracks open his Coke or pours his chips carefully into the little chip-compartment of his tray. Ryan looks for the ocean first, like he's worried it might have disappeared since yesterday.

There's Ryan, leaning on his shoulder against the locker next to Seth's, with his head tilted to the side and his hair down across his forehead, and Seth doesn't want to brush Ryan's hair out of his eyes, because Seth is not, contrary to popular rumor, a girl, but he does kinda wanna take a black plastic comb and a palmful of Brylcreem and just slick Ryan's hair back like a gangster, just to see what he'd look like.

Seth has never claimed not to be kind of strange.

Anyway, Ryan's everywhere, but Seth still misses him. And he can't breathe right, sometimes. And he looks at Ryan's neck and his arms and remembers walking in on him changing some day a long time ago, something he definitely should have forgotten by now. 

Seth hasn't played Playstation in more than two weeks. He's pretty sure he's going crazy.

And it ends pretty mundanely, really, all things considered.

Seth comes downstairs one Tuesday morning, red-eyed and exhausted, and the house is quiet because his mom and dad both had stuff to do early. Ryan's eating a toasted bagel and reading Arts and Leisure, but he hands it over without comment when Seth comes in the room.

Seth fixes himself a bagel and contemplates his glass of orange juice, thinking that just a little while ago, he'd be digressing extravagantly on the place of bagels in Jewish heritage and culture, palming Ryan's head and saying teasingly, "you're almost ready for your bar mitzvah, bubeleh," until Ryan pushed him away with a grin on his face. But, well. Things have changed.

They don't talk, other than basic stuff like, "Keys?" and "You gonna wanna actually take your backpack, or just leave it here in the hallway?" Seth has a weird tight dusty feeling in his throat, and he worries briefly about if he's developing asthma or something. That would just be perfect.

He's certainly not expecting to say anything, but then he steps out the front door behind Ryan and the sun hits his eyes, and Seth says, mostly to himself, "So, the thing is, we're friends."

Ryan stops. He's at the car, and Seth can see his reflection curving in the SUV's shiny side panel. Seth's eyes hurt, from the sun and the glare and whatever else he can blame it on.

Ryan cocks his head to the side. "I was under that impression, yeah."

Seth whips a hand through the air. "Okay, good. Good. Excellent. You know, and I know, so. Right. We both know."

"Seth-" Ryan takes a step forward and Seth jerks back, his shoulder blade clipping the door. Ryan's face goes surprised, and Seth shakes his head.

"All right, but no," Seth says. "I don't think you really get it. I mean, I think _you_ think you get it, but that doesn't necessarily make it true."

Ryan crosses his arms over his chest, the diagonal slash of his shoulder strap cutting from shoulder to hip and making Seth think strange things about heavy canvas fabric and metal buckles. "What don't I get?"

Swiping a hand quickly through his hair, Seth tries to remember. He was saying something, it was definitely important.

"You don't get it, man, because, like, we're friends, and that's. New for me. I mean, I never. So much. Had a friend. Um. I, really, I didn't have anything, and now I got you." Seth cuts himself off violently, horrified. "I mean, not that I _have_ you. Not that you're like an object or whatever, you know I got mad respect and all, and not, like, not how I _had_ Summer either, although she's not an object either and oh god please don't tell her I said that."

He stops again, pulling in a few deep breaths. Ryan's just looking at him with his face blank. He learned really early on that if he just let Seth go, eventually the point would be arrived at, or Seth would lose his train of thought and start talking about something else.

Seth pushes the heel of his hand into his forehead, squeezing his eyes shut. "I just don't think you get how much this means to me."

He expects Ryan to take a long moment to process that, and think it over, and carefully craft a response. Seth wants nothing but dramatic pauses, for the rest of his life. Suspense and cliffhangers, absolutely.

But Ryan couldn't care less about the buildup of tension. He has no sense of timing, none.

"I get it."

"Oh, fuck you, you do not," Seth answers tiredly.

"Don't swear."

Seth takes his hand down to glare at Ryan. "What are you, turning into my mom now? Because that would be the only way to make this weirder than it already is."

Ryan's standing there, vaguely challenging with his hip cocked out and his mouth all set and steady. Seth is still in the shade of the porch overhang, but Ryan's out in the driveway with all the day's light on him.

"Maybe you don't get me, either," Ryan says evenly. He meets Seth's eyes and doesn't look away.

Seth stares at him and remembers the upstairs hallway, soft carpet under his feet. Ryan is his best friend and that makes the least sense out of everything, a guy like Ryan, a guy like him. You could krazy-glue them together and they still wouldn't stick.

Ryan's jaw twitches and Seth knows he's clenching his teeth. He looks and Ryan's hands, half-buried in his elbows, are in hard fists. The tendon in Ryan's neck is taut, and before Seth can even think about it, he's moving out into the sunlight, and flattening his hands to Ryan's stomach, and pushing him back against the car.

There's a squeal as one of the metal bits of Ryan's messenger bag hits the door, but Seth has got his hands spread wide and curving around to Ryan's hips, and Ryan's looking up at him with surprise and fear and something, maybe, possibly. Something good.

"Okay," Seth says, his voice cracking. "Do I get you now?"

Ryan flashes a smile, his face slowly flushing and his eyes big like pennies, his perfectly well-known eyes and the flick to get his hair away, and all this stuff that Seth can remember even though it hasn't happened yet. 

Ryan tips his head to the side, puts his hand on Seth's chest. "Dude, you get everything," he tells Seth, and Seth decides if the world wants to come to an end right this second, he would probably be okay with that.

THE END


End file.
